The present invention relates to the field of data processing. Particularly, this invention relates to a software system and associated method for use in e-commerce advertising with a search engine that searches data maintain in systems which are linked together over an associated network such as the Internet. More specifically, this invention pertains to a computer software product for dynamically adapting, enhancing, and optimizing the appearance and content of a banner advertisement based on the automatic detection of competing advertising within a document.
The World Wide Web (WWW) is comprised of an expansive network of interconnected computers upon which businesses, governments, groups, and individuals throughout the world maintain inter-linked computer files known as web pages. Users navigate these pages by means of computer software programs commonly known as Internet browsers. Due to the vast number of WWW sites, many web pages have a redundancy of information or share a strong likeness in either function or title. The vastness of the unstructured WWW causes users to rely primarily on Internet search engines to retrieve information or to locate businesses. These search engines use various means to determine the relevance of a user-defined search to the information retrieved.
The authors of web pages provide information known as metadata, within the body of the hypertext markup language (HTML) document that defines the web pages. A computer software product known as a web crawler, systematically accesses web pages by sequentially following hypertext links from page to page. The crawler indexes the pages for use by the search engines using information about a web page as provided by its address or Universal Resource Locator (URL), metadata, and other criteria found within the page. The crawler is run periodically to update previously stored data and to append information about newly created web pages. The information compiled by the crawler is stored in a metadata repository or database. The search engines search this repository to identify matches for the user-defined search rather than attempt to find matches in real time.
A typical search engine has an interface with a search window where the user enters an alphanumeric search expression or keywords. The search engine sifts through available web sites for the user""s search terms, and returns the search of results in the form of web pages.
Currently, many web pages contain advertisements that assume various forms such as banner ads (or advertisements) across the top or bottom of the page. Such banner ads may include scrolled information containing images that change with time. Disadvantageously, from an advertiser""s perspective, web users have a tendency to mentally xe2x80x9ctune-outxe2x80x9d such advertisements as they read or interact with the information displayed on the main work area of a page. Furthermore, by utilizing a portion of the valuable xe2x80x9creal estatexe2x80x9d on a web page for advertisement, the remaining available work area on the page is reduced from its maximum full-screen capabilities.
Banner ads can use text, still, or moving graphics, or multimedia messages, and typically serve as hypertext links such that the user is linked to other specified pages if the user clicks on the banner ads. Banner ads can be categorized as corporate image ads or as information ads. The main purpose of corporate image ads is to enhance the visibility and public image of a business enterprise and to reflect its presence, participation and involvement in a particular domain. The information banner ads highlight a specific product, service, or content, and provide a URL link to corresponding content information pages.
The context in which the banner ads appear directly affects consumer interest in the advertisement. For example, a banner ad for computer sales generates more consumer response when placed in an editorial content section addressing computer issues than in one that addresses automobiles. However, banner ads promoting competing products or corporations may appear on the same web page. Advertisers are typically able to select the context in which their banner ad will appear (i.e., xe2x80x9ccomputer shoppingxe2x80x9d) but unable to select actual ad placement. In addition, the advertiser does not know which competing ads might appear on the same document or web page until the document is displayed in the user""s browser.
Ad server technology selects the placement of the banner ads based on a variety of factors. An ad server typically determines the time, location, method, and frequency of selecting a specific ad. As examples:
a company wishes to have its ads placed within a specific time period (e.g. from 4 PM to 8 PM local time);
a company wishes to have its ads associated with a particular search result item on a search result page; and/or
a company wishes to have its ads displayed at least 2000 times per hour. An exemplary ad server technology is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/617,455, supra.
There is therefore a need for a computer software product that dynamically adapts, enhances, and optimizes the display content, design, and overall communication style of a banner advertisement based on the automatic detection of competing advertising within a document.
The adaptive advertising system and associated method of the present invention satisfy this need. The adaptive ad system dynamically adapts the content of a banner ad to the advertising environment of the web pages on which it is displayed by automatically identifying and analyzing competing ads and restructuring the banner ad""s content and design.
The adaptive ad system responds to other ads based on ad category, targeted audience, and competition for audience or sales. Initially, the adaptive ad system will display either a standard content or no content at all. Displaying an ad with no content allows the advertiser to operate in xe2x80x9cstealth mode,xe2x80x9d i.e., to gain information about competing ads without the competitor""s knowledge.
The banner ad system focuses its analysis on key competitors. In the absence of competitors, the system integrates the information gleaned from all the ads on the page (or document) to devise a counter display strategy. The system creates new ad content based on the analysis of the embedded web page, and incorporates changes in the original layout, color, design, content and animation. This new ad design maximizes the visibility of the banner ad relative to competing advertisements.
The strategy for creating new ads to counter the competing advertisement is based on pre-defined rules. To provide flexibility in customizing the appearance and content of the ad, each hosted ad includes its own associated set of strategy rules. Treating each hosted ad individually also allows the advertiser to host more than one adaptive ad on a web page.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the present invention are realized by an adaptive advertising system that can be used in the context of an Internet environment. Transparently to the user, the system continuously operates in the background to adapt banner advertisements in response to the content and design of other ads appearing on the same web page.
The system is generally comprised of the following components: an ad web server, an ad identification manager, optionally a hosted ad database, a page analyzer, an ad comparison unit, optionally a competitor ad database, an OCR engine, an audio/video engine, a design and layout evaluator, an ad summary evaluator, optionally an ad rules database, an ad display generator, and optionally an alternate ad design database. While these components are illustrated and desribed as being distributed among the client""s side, the server, and on the advertiser""s side, it should be clear that at least some of these components and/or the functions associated therewith can be redistributed without affecting the performance or scope of the present invention.
In order to analyze the web page of the hosted ad, the adaptive advertising system of the present invention simulates web browser functionality using pattern matching to extract the desired source URL of the competing ad images. The adaptive advertising system also executes client-side scripts to retrieve the proper URLs of a multimedia source, if required to detect the presence of competing ads. In addition, an OCR engine converts image data to text data to extract the maximum amount of information about the competing advertisement. For competing advertisements with more sophisticated multimedia content, adaptive advertising system uses audio and video summarization techniques to extract data from the competing advertisement.